


Saltwater

by sevenfists



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Developing Relationship, Feelings, Kink Discovery, M/M, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Tentacle Dick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 00:44:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13260039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfists/pseuds/sevenfists
Summary: The naiad moved in shortly after Sid finished his house, that first summer, a week after he filled the pool. He noticed some splashing one morning while he was eating breakfast, and when he went outside to investigate, she popped her head up out of the water, clung to the side of the pool, and hissed at him.“Uh,” Sid said, still holding a slice of toast in one hand. Dew from the grass chilled his bare feet. “Are you—hi?”





	Saltwater

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a joke and then I wrote 20k. Thanks to saintroux for the candy trip report and for reading all 71 versions of this story, to snick for telling me how to fix the ending, and to everyone who patiently listened to my whining. 
> 
> There’s a little bit of bondage in here, and also I’m not kidding about the tentacle dick.

The naiad moved in shortly after Sid finished his house, that first summer, a week after he filled the pool. He noticed some splashing one morning while he was eating breakfast, and when he went outside to investigate, she popped her head up out of the water, clung to the side of the pool, and hissed at him.

“Uh,” Sid said, still holding a slice of toast in one hand. Dew from the grass chilled his bare feet. “Are you—hi?”

She hissed again. Her dark green hair, the same color as seaweed, stuck to her shoulders in wet tangles. Her brown skin gleamed wetly. Her teeth were really fucking sharp.

Naiads were pretty common in Nova Scotia: water creatures, and all that. If it were a qiqirn or something he would have been screwed, because it had been a long time since his high school coursework on advanced paranormals; but naiads he knew, and knew how to deal with. 

“I’m Sid,” he said, taking a single cautious step closer to the pool. “I live in this house. That’s my pool. Are you moving in?”

She closed her mouth. The terrifying teeth disappeared. She cocked her head to one side, considering him. “Move in,” she said, in a gurgling voice that sounded like water running in a brook.

“You’re welcome in these waters,” Sid said formally, and then added, “But I like to swim, and sometimes I have friends over to swim, so you’ve got to be okay with sharing.”

The naiad pondered this. “Share?”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “Don’t bite, don’t scare people. Don’t tease the pool guy. If you can’t share you’ll have to move somewhere else.”

“Share,” the naiad said, which Sid took as agreement.

“Okay,” Sid said. “Well, I’m gonna, uh. Go finish my breakfast.”

The naiad burbled at him and sank down into the water.

He mentioned it to Flower after practice that morning, when they were bullshitting around in the locker room. “Yeah, that’s the problem with those saltwater pools,” Flower said, like he knew literally fucking anything about pools aside from how to swim in them. “It’s better for their skin than the regular chlorine. I read an article.”

“As if any of us believe that you know how to read,” Tanger said in French.

Flower ignored him. “You need an exterminator? I know a guy.”

“It’s not a problem,” Sid said. “She seems friendly enough.”

“For now,” Flower said. “As soon as you piss her off, she’ll curse you with a tentacle dick.”

“That isn’t a thing that happens,” Sid said. “That’s an urban legend.”

“Frankly, I think a tentacle would be an upgrade for Sid,” Tanger said, still in French.

“Can we get rid of him?” Sid asked Flower. “Can we fire him from the team?”

“I’m afraid he’s got a contract,” Flower said. Sid ripped the tape from his socks, balled it up, and threw it across the room at Tanger’s head. 

Flower was wrong, and Sid was right: the naiad wasn’t a problem. She made herself scarce when he wanted to swim. Sometimes she watched him while he sat on the patio with a beer, bobbing in the water with only her eyes and the top of her head visible over the rim of the pool. Sid waved every time. Sometimes she waved back. When it was time to empty the pool for the winter, he warned her several weeks in advance, and she was gone a few days later, with no curses or commotion.

He thought that might be the end of it, but she came back the next summer, and it was fine. She sang to herself at night sometimes, and if Sid left his bedroom window open, he could hear the sound of her watery lullaby, like waves washing against the shore of a lake. One morning that September, after he got back to Pittsburgh, he woke up and found a water lily blossom sitting on one of the lounge chairs beside the pool. If she was bringing him presents, that meant she felt safe: she liked him. She wanted to stay.

Modern thinking held that paranormals were harmless but potentially troublesome and should be dealt with like toddlers, firmly yet kindly. But Sid believed the old superstitions, and he knew that a naiad’s favor was a blessing on his home. 

He went online and bought a nice framed photograph of a water lily blossom and hung it in his kitchen, the traditional heart of the home. Now the luck she had brought him would last.

“Nice picture,” Geno said, the next time he came over. “It’s new?”

“The naiad brought me a flower,” Sid said. “So.”

Geno smiled at him over the rim of his wine glass. “She likes you.”

“I think so,” Sid said. He felt pretty confident about it, after two summers. “Yeah.”

She came back again the next summer, although the team was out of the playoffs so early that Sid only saw her for a few days after he got back from Worlds and before he left for LA. “Weird summer for me,” he told her, sitting on the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water. “But I’ll be back in September, eh? I’ve got a new pool guy, so don’t freak him out.”

She grinned at him, and spat a thin stream of water through her spiny teeth.

In September, when he was back, he opened up the house, unpacked his bags, took a shower to wash off the airplane, and went outside to tell the naiad he had come home. She knew the sound of the sliding doors opening and usually bobbed her head up out of the water to greet him, but this time there was no sign of her.

He went down the path toward the pool. “Hi? I’m back in town, thought I would—”

She erupted from the water, seething, making a shrill whistling noise he had never heard before. Sid stopped in his tracks. Her skin looked pale and washed out, an unhealthy pallor. Even her hair was a few shades lighter.

Sid took another step. “Are you sick? I can call a hedgewitch—”

She snarled at him, baring all of her teeth. She was clutching something to her chest. Sid frowned, seriously concerned now, and came around the lounge chairs toward the ladder at the side of the pool, intending to get in the water and see if he could figure out what the problem was.

She made that same noise again, like an angry tea kettle, and Sid belatedly realized what she was holding. Too late: he had come too close. 

He managed a single step backwards before it hit him, a stunning wave of weakness and nausea, and he sank to his knees on the pavers as her magic took hold of him.

“I’m sorry,” he gritted out, hunched over, his hands braced on the stones, his head down as he fought the urge to vomit. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see—I didn’t mean to—”

She shrilled again and dove into the pool.

He had to crawl back to the house on his hands and knees. His muscles trembled with the exertion. His phone was still on the kitchen table, where he had left it; he managed to drag himself upright with one of the chairs and fumble his phone onto the floor.

His first stupid impulse was to call Geno, but Geno wouldn’t be back in the US until tomorrow. Instead he called Nathalie, who was the other person in Pittsburgh most likely to cluck at him sympathetically and stroke his hair.

She came over at once with a thermos full of chicken broth, and sat on the floor with him to help him drink it. Slowly, his shaking eased. The nausea subsided. When the broth was gone, he wiped his mouth and managed to sit up. 

Nathalie smiled at him. “Better?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thank you. For coming over. I know you’ve got better things to do than, uh. This.”

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “A naiad curse has to be dealt with right away. I’m glad I was home. You should have called an ambulance.” 

“Yeah,” Sid said. “Wasn’t really thinking.” He’d wanted to call _Geno_ , for Christ’s sake.

Nathalie took the thermos from him and screwed the cap back on. “What happened? I thought this naiad liked you.”

“She had a baby,” Sid said. He carefully pushed himself to his feet and bent down to offer Nathalie a hand. “I didn’t see it in time. Thought she was just being weird.”

“Oh, a baby!” Nathalie said. “That’s wonderful. She must feel very safe here.”

“Not anymore,” Sid said grimly. “I think I ruined it. She’s probably left for good.”

“After years in your pool? I don’t think so.” Nathalie put her hand on his arm and gave him a gentle squeeze. “Give her a few days. I’m certain she’ll be back.”

“Maybe,” Sid said. He should have noticed sooner, or taken her warnings seriously. He had come to think of her as his strange aquatic roommate, when really she was a wild creature who would never trust or understand him.

Nathalie insisted on driving him to UPMC to be examined by the team’s hedgewitch. Cora spent a long time with her fingertips pressed to his temples, listening to his blood, and Sid braced himself for bad news.

But Cora gave him a clean bill of health. “Mrs. Lemieux got to you in time. You’ll be right as rain in time for the media tour.”

“Really?” Sid said, stunned but pleased. A kid he knew growing up had been cursed by a naiad, and he was bedridden for weeks. 

“Really,” Cora said, and she sent him home with strict instructions to drink as much chicken broth as he could handle for the next three days and to call her if any new symptoms appeared.

Nathalie took him home and got him settled on the couch with plenty of water, a fresh thermos of chicken broth, and his phone and tablet both close at hand. “Call me if you need anything,” she said, “I’ll come by to check on you tomorrow,” and wouldn’t listen to any of his protesting that he was fine on his own.

He _was_ fine. He would be fine in a few days. 

He was fine until he woke up the next morning, stumbled into the washroom to piss, and instead of the familiar shape of his dick his fingers encountered something fat, soft, and slimy.

He recoiled at once, yanking his hand out of his shorts. “What the fuck, what the _fuck_.” He shoved down his shorts, and there it was, orangey-pink, longer and thicker than his dick, narrowing down a small tipped point: a tentacle.

“What the fuck,” he said again, weakly, and sank to his knees in front of the toilet, closed the lid, and rested his head there for a few minutes, until he felt a little bit less like he was going to pass out.

\+ + +

“Wow, tentacle dick,” Cora said. “She must have been _really_ mad.”

“Uh,” Sid said.

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t helpful,” Cora said. “Look, I know it’s distressing and inconvenient, but it won’t hurt you. I’ll get started on the counter-curse right away. It may take me a while. This is a rare side effect, and the magic involved is pretty potent.”

“A while,” Sid repeated.

“Maybe a couple of weeks,” Cora said. “Three weeks at most.”

“A couple of _weeks_?” Sid said, his stomach sinking, a queasy sensation like coming over the top of a roller coaster. He’d had to pee sitting down because he couldn’t bring himself to touch his—the tentacle. _Weeks_ of this?

“I know, I’m sorry,” Cora said. “The only other option is to get the naiad to lift the curse herself, but usually that doesn’t happen if they’re mad enough to curse you in the first place. It’s worth a shot, though.”

Sure: if Sid could find her, or ever get her to speak with him again. “I’ll do my best.”

When he ended the call, he stayed where he was on the couch for a few minutes, staring up at the ceiling. Then he went into the kitchen to fix some more chicken broth. 

Cora had told him to stay home for three days: nothing more strenuous than a stroll around the block. Sid hated sitting around at home even under the best of circumstances, and it was much worse than usual now, because he was desperate for something to take his mind off the sticky, slimy thing between his legs. 

He was okay as long as he didn’t think about the tentacle. Every time he remembered, he had to do some of the breathing exercises Flower had taught him to keep himself from freaking out. Whenever he had to take a leak—and he had to piss constantly, from all the chicken broth—he spent a few minutes psyching himself up, and then couldn’t bring himself to actually touch the tentacle at all. He sat there and drip-dried. 

God. _Weeks_.

After lunch—more chicken broth—he shuffled out to the pool. His legs were tired, and he sat down at the end of a lounge chair to catch his breath for a moment. The pool was still and empty. He didn’t know how naiad magic worked, how she was able to come and go, or where she went over the winters. He certainly didn’t know how to make her come back.

“Uh, hi,” he said, feeling like an asshole. She probably couldn’t even hear him. He wished he knew her name, but if naiads had names, they didn’t share them with humans. “Listen, I’m really sorry about yesterday. I wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt your baby. I hope you’ll come back.” And give him his regular dick back, but saying that aloud would probably undermine his sincerity. 

Nothing happened. The breeze rustled through the big oak tree. A car drove by. The sun baked his face and the bare tops of his feet. After a few minutes, he went back inside.

\+ + +

The timing was awful if he had wanted to keep it a secret. Guys were starting to trickle back into town. They would start holding informal practices soon in advance of training camp, and there was no way to hide a tentacle in the locker room. Even Sid being housebound was suspicious. He wanted to get together with Kessel and welcome him to the team, but there was nothing he could do aside from sending an apologetic text message saying he was a little under the weather.

Flower had gotten back into town a few days ago, and he texted Sid in the morning and invited himself over. **You home? Estelle wants to say hi**

Sid contemplated his sad breakfast of chicken broth. There was no real reason they _couldn’t_ come over. He wasn’t under quarantine. He was still moving slowly, though, and Flower would notice immediately and crawl up Sid’s ass until Sid told him everything.

“Fuck,” he muttered, and texted Flower: **Be great to see you guys, I’m home so come on over**

Estelle was excited to see Sid for about five minutes, and then she lost interest and started pushing a toy fire engine around the kitchen. As soon as her attention was diverted, Flower turned his gimlet eye on Sid and said, “What’s wrong with you? Summer cold?”

There was no use lying about it. “Naiad curse,” Sid said, and watched sympathy and glee war in Flower’s expression.

“Well,” Flower said.

“Yeah, I’ve got a tentacle dick,” Sid said. “It’s a real thing. You were right. Happy?”

Flower clapped both hands over his mouth and made a high-pitched noise.

Sid sighed and drank some more chicken broth and waited for Flower to get it out of his system.

“Can I see it?” Flower whispered.

“What? No!” Sid glared at him. “Really? Get out of my house.”

“I’m sorry, come on,” Flower said. “That’s it. I’m serious now. You talked to Cora?”

“Yeah,” Sid said, and gave him the rundown, and the likely timeline for dick restoration. “Can you imagine what Kessel’s going to think? Welcome to Pittsburgh, your captain’s packing a tentacle.”

“I’m sure he’s seen weirder things,” Flower said. “You know what Toronto’s like.”

Flower agreed to gently break the news to the team so that Sid wouldn’t have to answer any questions about his tentacle, and then he took Estelle home and left Sid to the important business of taking a mid-morning nap on the couch. 

Geno was traveling all that day, back to Pittsburgh from Moscow—coming home to Sid, and thinking of it that way made him feel a little embarrassed but also warmly pleased. The flight from Amsterdam had departed by the time Sid woke up from his nap, and he tracked the plane all the way across the Atlantic until Geno landed in New York in the early afternoon. Geno texted him not long after: **In NY now)))**

Sid smiled at his phone, helplessly, so ready to see Geno again after a long summer apart. They had last been together Prague in May. **Did you sleep on the plane?**

**Little bit but its not comfy** , Geno replied, and they messaged back and forth until it was time for Geno to board his next flight.

Sid tracked that flight, too, and texted Geno as soon as the plane landed. **Welcome back :)**

**See u tomorrow ok? Too grumpy now**

Geno had been en route for eighteen hours and would be terrible company. **Tomorrow’s fine** , Sid replied, and spent the rest of the evening trying to decide how he was going to tell Geno about the tentacle.

\+ + +

Jet lag always fucked up Geno’s sleep schedule, and he had already sent Sid a number of text messages by the time Sid woke up the next morning: **House smell weird** and **Why u not awake yet?** and then **Siiiiiid**

He was so obnoxious, and Sid knew he was fucked because he thought it was cute. **I’m awake, come over**. He didn’t want to explain the tentacle, but he really wanted to see Geno.

Geno replied with a penguin emoji, and Sid got out of bed to brush his teeth, because no tentacle was going to keep him from at least a little bit of kissing.

Geno had the gate code and a key. Sid was sitting at the kitchen table with his bowl of chicken broth when he heard the side door open, and he resisted the urge to climb to his feet. He didn’t want to seem too eager. But then Geno was there in the doorway, wearing the basketball shorts that did nothing to conceal how much he liked freeballing, tall and tan and infuriatingly hot, and Sid stopped caring about the tentacle or playing it cool. It had been months.

Geno leaned against the doorframe and tucked his hands in his pockets. A smile lurked around his eyes. “Hi, Sid.”

God. Sid got up and crossed the room and Geno reached for him and pulled him into his arms. He smelled so good, and different than he usually did; new body wash, maybe. Sid held him and tucked his face in the crook of Geno’s neck, feeling the warmth of his skin. He was here.

Sid pulled back after a minute or two and looked up. Geno was smiling at him, the soft smile for kids and animals, or for Sid at times, although he could never figure out what he did to make Geno look at him like that. 

“Hi,” Geno said. He kissed Sid’s cheek, and then the other one, and then the corner of his mouth. His hands slid down Sid’s back to his hips. “Sid. Hi.”

“Hi,” Sid said. He knew his smile was probably edging toward the extremely goofy. He turned his head to kiss Geno’s mouth.

It was a sweet kiss, careful. Sid repositioned and kissed Geno again, a little deeper, slower. Geno’s lips parted. Sid slid his hands beneath Geno’s T-shirt and traced patterns over Geno’s lower back with his fingernails, and smiled into the kiss when Geno shivered against him.

“Sid,” Geno muttered, kissing him again, turning him to press him up against the wall. Sid went eagerly and pulled Geno against him, sliding his feet apart to let Geno get a thigh wedged between his legs, and then he remembered all at once and froze.

Geno froze, too, and pulled back to frown at him. “Sid?”

“Uh,” Sid said, and took a deep breath. “You know how I’ve got that naiad in my pool?”

“Yes,” Geno said, frowning harder, and Sid took another breath.

Geno wouldn’t believe him about the tentacle until Sid pushed his shorts down to his knees, face flaming, and showed him. 

Geno looked a little pink, too. Well, the whole situation was embarrassing. “Oh my God,” Geno said, eyes wide, and reached out to touch. 

Sid flinched back and yanked up his shorts. “Don’t. It’s gross.” He went back to the table and sat at his place closest to the window, where the morning light came through. His broth had gone tepid. He took a spoonful anyway.

“When it’s happen?” Geno demanded.

“Uh, two days ago,” Sid said.

Geno’s face went totally blank, wiped clear of all expression. “Two days? You don’t tell me.”

“You couldn’t do anything about it,” Sid said. “I didn’t want you to worry.” He took his cues from Geno, who didn’t really share that kind of thing with him. Sid never wanted to request anything from Geno that he wasn’t willing to give. Geno could so easily find someone else to do this with, and Sid didn’t want to give him any reason to go looking. 

Geno muttered something in Russian and blew out a loud breath. “Okay. What’s Cora say?”

“I’ll be fine,” Sid said. “Back on solid food tomorrow. I feel way better than I did yesterday. Cora said I’m fine to go to Toronto. The magic’s almost worked its way out of my system by now. Except for the, uh. The tentacle.”

“Okay, what about tentacle?” Geno demanded. “When that’s gone?”

“It might—be a while,” Sid said, and told Geno what Cora had said about the counter-curse.

Geno sat beside him at the table and rested one hand on Sid’s knee. “Weeks?”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “It sucks, but. No way around it.”

“We break curse,” Geno said. “Find naiad. Make her forgive you.”

“How are you gonna do that?” Sid said. “Come on. You don’t have time for that. I’ll just wait for Cora.”

“But—sex?” Geno said plaintively.

“There are plenty of things we can do that don’t involve my dick,” Sid said. Unless Geno was too disgusted by the thought of the tentacle, even if Sid kept his pants on the whole time.

“I like your dick,” Geno said, even more plaintively. He eyed Sid’s bowl of broth. “But I think we don’t have sex today anyway. You’re still chicken broth. It’s important you rest.”

“I’ve _been_ resting,” Sid said. “I feel way better. Seriously.” They had screwed around at Worlds a few times, but still it had been three months since the last time he saw Geno’s dick, which was frankly unacceptable. He was absolutely well enough for sex. He would just take a nap after.

But Geno wouldn’t be swayed. He bullied Sid into a second bowl of broth, and then herded him into the den, waited for him to lie down on the sofa, and then actually covered him with a blanket even though it was warm enough out that Sid was running the AC.

“Come on, I’m not _dying_ ,” Sid said.

Geno turned on the TV and flipped through a few channels. “Naiad curse is serious. You get lucky that Nathalie knows what to do. Maybe it’s bad if she’s not here.” He found the History Channel and returned the remote to the coffee table, still without making eye contact with Sid.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Sid said. Of course it felt great to have Geno taking care of him, but he knew this wasn’t what Geno had been anticipating when he came over.

“Don’t have to, but I want,” Geno said firmly, and there was really no way Sid could argue with that.

Geno sat on the couch with him, Sid’s feet on his lap, and stayed there all morning. Sid had expected that they would catch up and talk about their summers, but in truth there wasn’t all that much to say. They had texted every day since the end of the season, and Skyped multiple times a week; there wasn’t much about his summer that Geno didn’t already know, and vice versa. Instead, they talked about the coming season, and the new guys on the team—“ _Kessel_ , Sid,” Geno said wonderingly.

“Yeah,” Sid said. He wiggled his feet in Geno’s lap and smiled at him. “I know.”

Geno left after lunch, after cajoling Sid into another two bowls of broth and then returning him to the sofa. “Don’t want to leave, but I need to do errand,” he said, and bent down to kiss Sid’s mouth. “Text me what you need, okay?”

“I don’t need anything,” Sid said. He reached up to grab Geno’s T-shirt and pull him down for another kiss. “Thanks, G.”

“You don’t need to thank,” Geno said. He kissed Sid again and ran a hand over his hair. “See you tomorrow, okay?”

As soon as Geno was gone, Sid got off the couch and went to find his laptop. He really was feeling a lot better; there was no reason for him to lie around all afternoon like an invalid. The curse had made him feel like he was wading through mud, or maybe quicksand, but the fog was lifting now. He could think again. 

He spent some time searching the internet for ways to lure the naiad back. Google was full of suggestions, and most of them seemed pretty absurd, or logistically impossible—there was probably no way Sid would be able to get his hands on a water buffalo in Pittsburgh—but he made a list of some of the more reasonable advice. He could work on it when they got back from Toronto. No way could he wait three weeks to have sex with Geno.

\+ + +

He woke in the night from a detailed, explicit dream about sitting on Geno’s face. Geno was gripping his hips and working his tongue against Sid’s hole, and Sid was humping the mattress when he woke up, sweating, face hot, and his dick—

He rolled over onto his back, panting. That wasn’t his dick.

It—the tentacle—it felt hot and swollen, thick and throbbing where it lay against his abdomen. Sid hissed air through his teeth. He wanted to get off, but he didn’t—it was disgusting. It felt even slimier than usual. He didn’t mind tentacles in the abstract, or even attached to creatures that were meant to have them, but a tentacle attached to _him_ , in the place his dick was supposed to be, turned his stomach. He didn’t want to touch it.

He rolled over again and tentatively pushed his hips down into the mattress. That felt good, better than he would have expected. He did it again, grinding against the sheets. Somehow the tentacle’s slickness didn’t rub off, and the friction was perfect, not too dry, exactly what Sid needed to get off.

He was alone in his house, and the room was midnight-dark from the blackout curtains. Nobody could see him, and he didn’t have to look at himself. He clutched at the pillow and buried his face in it to muffle his groans.

He thought about Geno, and the last time they’d had sex, in Geno’s hotel room in Prague. Geno had put Sid face-down on the bed and fucked his thighs, lying on top of him and kissing the back of his neck, and Sid had come like that, humping the mattress just like he was now. Geno was so big, he had the biggest hands and the biggest goddamn dick, and the _noises_ he made—

He had big hands, and in Sid’s dream they had been at his waist, guiding him, and then sliding down to squeeze his hips. Everything had worked perfectly in the dream: his balls weren’t in the way, he didn’t have to worry about Geno getting smothered, Geno never got tired or wanted to change positions. Sid had just been able to enjoy it, the wet slide of Geno’s tongue against him, and he was well on his way, thinking about that, Geno holding him against his mouth—

And then he thought again of Prague, and how Geno had turned him over and kissed him, lying between Sid’s loosely splayed thighs, both of them smeared with come and lube, kissing him over and over with Sid’s hands tangled in his hair. “Sid,” he had said, between kisses, “Sid,” and Sid rubbed against the bed and thought of Geno kissing him and that was how he came, frantic and hot-faced, the tentacle twitching and spurting into the sheets. 

He immediately felt sticky and pathetic. Ruined sheets could be sexy as long as you were with a partner, but on his own, in a bed where he needed to sleep until morning, it only seemed sad and damp. 

He rolled over, away from the wet spot, pulled the covers up around his ears, and went back to sleep.

His alarm went off five minutes later, or at least that was what it felt like. He shoved the blankets aside and glared down the length of his body at the tentacle, inert now, heavy and clammy, curled against his groin. He had been peeing sitting down for three days, which made him feel like a little kid who hadn’t learned how to aim yet. It was getting ridiculous. He needed to quit being so squeamish and deal with the situation like an adult. The tentacle was temporary, there wouldn’t be any lasting damage, and Sid didn’t want to spend the next two to three weeks flinching every time he took off his pants.

Fine. He braced himself, reached down, and gingerly curled his fingers around the tentacle. 

It was slimy, but it was always slimy. It didn’t have suckers, at least, although the underside had little round nubs, like maybe the magic had thought about suckers but decided against them in the end. He dragged his fingers along the length of the tentacle, base to tip. His abs jumped. The tentacle was more sensitive than his dick. Apart from the slime, touching it wasn’t awful. It was soft and velvety, and firm with muscle underneath. When he pulled his hand away, the slime didn’t cling to his fingers. 

Okay. It was fine. Two or three weeks. No big deal.

He pissed standing up and felt pretty proud of himself.

\+ + +

He and Geno and Jen went to Toronto later that morning, for two days of filming and talking to reporters. It was Sid’s first time out of the house since the naiad cursed him, and it felt good to drive himself to the airport and park and walk into the terminal: normal things.

“You feel better?” Geno asked him as they waited to board the plane, leaning in toward Sid with his hands in his pockets. He was wearing basketball shorts and ugly white athletic shoes and he looked good enough to—well.

“Yeah,” Sid said. “Back to normal. Uh, mostly.”

“Good,” Geno said, and gave Sid an up-and-down look that made Sid’s blood heat. “Tonight?”

Sid cast a glance at Jen to see if she was listening, but she was focused on her phone. “Yeah. Mine?”

“Yours,” Geno said, “text me,” with a promise in his gaze that Sid had to look away from. His trousers didn’t hide much, and he knew now that the tentacle could get—hard.

He spent that afternoon filming a commercial for CCM, which didn’t give him a lot of time to think about Geno. They went for an early dinner with Jen, and when she got up to visit the washroom, Geno said, “We go back to hotel, I change, come to your room. Okay?”

“Yeah,” Sid said. “What did you have in mind?”

He expected a smirk or a filthy innuendo, but instead Geno’s gaze dropped away, and his ears turned pink. “Just see you,” he muttered.

Oh. “Whatever you want,” Sid said. Surely it was the tentacle. Geno didn’t want anything to do with it. Well, they didn’t have to have sex. Sid would be pretty happy just making out for a while, and maybe if he was persuasive enough he could suck Geno’s dick.

In his hotel room, Sid changed into sleep shorts and a T-shirt. He closed the curtains and turned on the lamps beside the bed to make the room seem cozier and less impersonal. After a few minutes, Geno tapped at the door. He had changed, too, and as good as he looked in his nice trousers and a well-fitting shirt, Sid’s favorite version of Geno was this one with sweatpants and rumpled hair, because it was the closest he got to feeling like Geno was showing him his real self. 

Geno leaned in for a kiss as soon as the door closed behind him. “Hope you not too tired.” He had a bag of something in one hand, and he held it up and shook it. The writing was all in Russian. “You don’t eat dessert at dinner, so I bring you.”

“What is it?” Sid asked. He followed as Geno moved into the room and settled on the bed, cross-legged on top of the overstuffed white duvet.

“Good kind of Russian candy,” Geno said. “Favorite.” He said something in Russian, and then, “It’s bird’s milk.”

Sid squinted at him. That didn’t sound too appetizing. “Bird’s milk?”

Geno grinned at him and tore open the bag. “Not milk from bird. It’s—how you say, I don’t know. It’s not really milk. It means, like—very rare, special.”

“An idiom,” Sid said.

“Maybe,” Geno said. He patted the mattress beside him. “Come here, eat. I bring from Russia for you.”

Sid didn’t know what was going on with Geno. He had seemed to imply in the airport that he wanted sex, but now he wanted to eat candy—but it was candy he had brought for Sid all the way from Moscow, and Sid felt all tangled up and bewildered, and annoyed with himself for feeling that way. 

“Sid?” Geno said, cocking his head, and Sid shook himself out of it and joined Geno on the bed.

The candy was chocolate with a soft filling, kind of like a Three Musketeers bar. “It’s good,” Sid said, and Geno beamed at him and unwrapped another piece. Sid watched his face as he leaned over to deposit the wrapper on the nightstand, the familiar relaxed lines his expression settled into when he wasn’t thinking of anything in particular. Sid was as gooey inside as the candy. Bird’s milk.

Maybe, after two years of sex, he should have been on firmer ground with Geno. He knew Geno wasn’t sleeping with anyone else, because they’d had that conversation when they agreed to ditch the condoms. But some part of Geno was always closed off to Sid. Everything between them was light and easy, uncomplicated. Sid liked uncomplicated, but he knew from experience that even a really good relationship wasn’t easy all the time, not for two solid years. 

Well, the first year had been pretty casual. They hooked up from time to time when they were both in the mood for it. But last year it turned into a regular thing, and Geno had raised the condoms issue over the winter, and after that they were sort of—well. They were at each other’s houses all the time, and they texted whenever they weren’t together. They never talked about what would happen over the summer, but somehow all of the texting and talking just—didn’t stop, until Sid instinctively knew the time difference to Moscow without calculating. 

Something had changed over the summer. You didn’t spend months Skyping a guy if it was totally casual. He wasn’t sure where they had landed, though, and Geno would never say what was on his mind. Sid was his piece of ass, not his confidante. 

“Here,” Geno said, offering the candy, and Sid leaned forward and opened his mouth.

Geno fed it to him, his dark eyes lingering over Sid’s mouth, and stroked his thumb over Sid’s lower lip before he drew his hand away. “You like?”

“Mm-hmm,” Sid said, chewing. He shifted closer and leaned in to give Geno a close-mouthed kiss. “Thanks. I really like it.”

“Best for you,” Geno said. He curled his hand around the back of Sid’s neck and deepened the kiss. They both still had some candy in their mouths. Sid didn’t mind enough to pull away. 

“C’mere,” he said, and drew Geno down onto the bed, into his arms. 

It felt great to be close to Geno again, pleasantly crushed into the mattress by his weight. Geno gave him endless, slow kisses, their lips meeting and parting, Sid’s arms around Geno’s neck to hold him close. He let Geno keep things light and sweet until he couldn’t bear it anymore and pressed his tongue into Geno’s mouth. Then their kissing turned into making out, pretty hot and heavy, with Geno’s hands underneath Sid’s shirt and Sid’s leg around Geno’s waist, giving him the leverage to grind his hips up. 

Geno started kissing his neck just the way Sid liked it, rubbing his stubble against Sid’s skin, and Sid felt—the tentacle taking an interest. He cringed and tried to roll away.

Geno wouldn’t let him. “It’s okay,” Geno said into his ear. “ _Sid_. It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Sid said, turning his head away from Geno. The tentacle throbbed between his legs. Geno’s cock was a thick, hard line against his abdomen. He wanted to get off, but he couldn’t bear the thought of Geno looking at him with disgust. “It’s weird. We don’t have to—let me suck you off.”

“No,” Geno said, and started kissing along Sid’s neck again. He kept Sid pinned there, his hips heavy on top of Sid’s. Sid outweighed him by a not inconsiderable amount and could get away if he really wanted to, but Geno was so warm and solid, and Sid didn’t have any desire to get away. He wanted to stay just like that, or else suck Geno’s dick.

Geno bit down, not too hard, and rubbed their hips together, grinding his cock against Sid’s tentacle. Sid had finally had enough. “Knock it off,” he said, and got his hands on Geno’s shoulders, pushing him back far enough for their eyes to meet.

Geno huffed and sat up. He was flushed and breathing hard, and Sid’s eyes dropped helplessly to the fat bulge of his dick, outlined by the soft cotton of his sweatpants. “What? What you’re worry about? You think I forget you have tentacle? I don’t forget.” His tongue slid across his lower lip. “I wish you let me—”

“What?” Sid said, when Geno didn’t continue. “Let you what?”

Geno went pinker. He didn’t reply. He shifted back and stripped off his own shirt and then Sid’s, and finally worked Sid’s shorts down over his hips. Sid held his breath, like maybe if he didn’t move too much, Geno would somehow overlook the tentacle. Geno’s gaze flickered down. Sid closed his eyes.

“Sid,” Geno said, voice rough. “I know you’re embarrass. But it’s okay. Let me touch, please.”

Sid brought his hands up to cover his face. “You shouldn’t. It’s—”

“Gross, I know,” Geno said gently. “You say. But I don’t think it’s gross, okay? I miss you all summer, I want sex with you now. I don’t care about tentacle.”

Sid let out a shaky breath. “Fine. Do whatever you want.”

Geno made a pleased noise. He repositioned slightly and trailed his fingers down Sid’s torso, from his shoulders to his groin. Sid was a little bit ticklish, and Geno’s light touch made him squirm.

“Move hands,” Geno said. “Let me see you.”

He was hiding mostly because he didn’t want to see Geno’s face. But when he moved his hands away and opened his eyes, Geno didn’t look uncomfortable or uncertain. He smiled warmly at Sid and slid his hands a little lower, to stroke at the base of the tentacle.

Sid arched against the bed, shocked by how good it felt. Geno laughed and held him down with both hands on his hips. “It’s good?” Geno asked.

“Fuck,” Sid said. “It’s—sensitive.”

“Hmm,” Geno said. He left one hand on Sid’s hip and stroked the tentacle with the other, gentle brushes of his fingertips that felt as good as a blowjob usually did. “It’s big. More big than your dick.”

“Yeah.” Sid trembled as Geno teased at him with careful touches, trailing his fingertips along the length of the tentacle. “You saying my dick’s too small for you?”

“Your dick is perfect,” Geno said. He lifted the tentacle from Sid’s belly and curled his hand around it, and squeezed gently. Sid’s ass clenched, driving his hips up into Geno’s grasp. “It’s soft. Wet.”

“I think it gets, uh. Wetter. When I’m turned on,” Sid said. Geno squeezed him again, a little more firmly, and Sid reached out to grab his wrist. “Not too hard. It’s pretty, uh.”

“Okay, I’m careful,” Geno said. He slid his hand down the length of it, and Sid dropped his head back against the pillow to take a few desperate breaths. He’d thought the night before was a fluke, a combination of the dream and a few days without jerking off, but he was about to go off just as fast and hard and only from Geno playing with him a little bit.

“Sensitive,” Geno said. The tentacle had firmed up now, stiff but still flexible, and Geno was able to jack it like he would jack Sid’s dick, using the—slime, the _wetness_ , to ease the way. Sid twisted beneath him and heard himself cry out, and Geno leaned down and kissed him, messy now that Sid’s coordination was shot.

“Geno,” Sid said when Geno sat up again, a little panicked from how close he was already. He felt the tentacle _move_ in Geno’s hand, not totally with his permission, and then the panic was more from the thought that Geno would get freaked out and stop touching him. “I’m gonna—”

“I know, I see you,” Geno said. He didn’t seem freaked out. He worked one hand over the tentacle and ran his other hand over Sid’s chest. “All pink. I know you’re close when you get pink here, your shoulders. You feel warm?”

“Yeah,” Sid said. His cheeks were pretty warm. “Geno—”

“Shh, don’t worry,” Geno said. He kept moving his hand in that same slow rhythm, slower and looser than how he touched Sid’s dick. “I want to see you. You need to come, it’s okay, I want you to.”

 _God_. Sid’s thighs twitched with each slow drag of Geno’s hand down and back up. God, he was close, he was so fucking close, and he could dimly hear the noises he was making, small choked moans. The tentacle felt huge and swollen, flexing a little in Geno’s hand. Sid arched desperately, trying to get a little more—

“Good, shh,” Geno said, stroking the sensitive inside of Sid’s thigh. He tightened his grip slightly and pulled his hand up the length of the tentacle to tease at the tip, and the pleasure broke over Sid in a hard shudder, cracking wide and spilling out all over.

Geno worked him through it until it was too much and Sid reached down to still his hand. Then he bent to kiss Sid’s slack mouth. “Good?”

Sid wriggled a little on the mattress. He felt amazing. He opened his eyes and smiled up at Geno, who looked kind of dazed. “It was great.”

Geno lifted his hand to his mouth and licked tentatively at his fingers. Sid made a face, watching him: who knew what came out of the tentacle? But Geno shrugged and said, “Tastes the same. More thin. Not so much.”

“Thanks for the feedback,” Sid said, grinning. He reached out and tugged down the waistband of Geno’s sweats to pull out Geno’s cock, wet at the tip and so hard Sid knew he was probably desperate to get off. “Jesus. That did it for you, huh?”

He was teasing, but Geno flushed a dark, blotchy red and scowled down at his lap. “Don’t laugh.”

“I’m not—hey,” Sid said. He took Geno’s clean hand and brought it to his mouth. He kissed the palm and then turned it over to kiss the knuckles. “I’m only teasing. That was really good, okay?”

Geno thumbed at Sid’s mouth. “I miss you, think about this.” He was still red. He wrapped his wet hand around his cock, slicking himself with Sid’s come, and started to jerk off. His other hand teased the seam of Sid’s lips. 

Sid opened his mouth for Geno to push his thumb in, stroking over Sid’s tongue. He was still twitchy with aftershocks, more sensitive than he usually was after coming, and sensitive all over his body. Geno’s thumb in his mouth felt shockingly good.

“Sid,” Geno whispered. He was working himself fast and rough, to make himself come. His eyes met Sid’s for a moment, bright and stunning, and then his gaze dropped down—to his hand on his cock, Sid thought at first, but he realized after a moment that Geno was actually looking at the tentacle.

Sid fought the urge to cover himself. Maybe Geno was trying to delay his orgasm. He stroked Geno’s trembling thighs and slid his hands up to cup Geno’s balls, drawn up tight already. He sucked on Geno’s thumb and then pulled off to kiss the tip. “You should come on me.”

Geno swore in Russian. His cock jerked in his hand. “You want?”

“Yeah,” Sid said. He stroked behind Geno’s balls, curling his middle finger to tease at Geno’s hole. “Make a mess.”

“Fuck!” Geno braced his hand on Sid’s hip and hunched forward. His face was all twisted up. He looked incredible, his shoulders bigger from his summer training, his belly folding softly on itself the way Sid loved. He groaned loudly. “Sid, Sid—”

“I know, I hear you,” Sid said. He wished he had lube; Geno got really noisy with a couple of fingers. Well, he would have other chances.

Geno cried out and tensed up. His hole fluttered against Sid’s fingertip as he started to come. Sid watched his face as Geno leaned forward even more: the ecstatic pain of his clenched eyebrows, the open curve of his mouth. Geno cried out again as the first wet spurt of come hit Sid’s navel, and Sid slid both hands up Geno’s back to his shoulders and drew him down.

“That’s good, come on,” he murmured, kissing Geno’s hot face and holding him tight as Geno shuddered above him, his hips jerking as he came all over Sid’s chest and belly.

“Jesus,” Geno said, panting. He lifted his head and propped himself on one elbow to stroke Sid’s hair. He looked disheveled and happy. “I forget how you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sid asked. 

“Slutty,” Geno said, and laughed as Sid flipped him over and pinned him. He was such a dick, and he thought he was hilarious. Sid kissed him until he stopped smiling and started kissing back, his arms twining around Sid’s neck. Sid had missed him for months. It was so good to have him now.

“See?” Geno said, when they finally broke apart. “Tentacle is okay. No big deal.”

“Thanks, G,” Sid said quietly. He kissed the corner of Geno’s mouth. “Not too much longer now.”

Geno smiled up at him. “Let’s shower. Then we eat more candy and watch TV.”

“Good plan,” Sid said, but first he ducked his head for another kiss.

\+ + +

They were back in Pittsburgh the following evening, and in the morning Sid called Cora to check on the counter-curse.

“It takes time, Sid,” she said. “Everything’s going fine so far. I’ll need some hair clippings from you soon, but that can wait until the next time you’re here. No need to make a special trip.”

Sid sighed. There was no helping it. “Thanks, Cora.”

He went shopping that morning to buy the stuff he needed to lure the naiad back: inflatable beach balls, a vial of food-grade blue glitter, several packages of dried seaweed, sidewalk chalk, twine, and a can of macadamia nuts. Geno texted him while he was waiting in line at the grocery store: **Come for lunch, I cook)**

 **Can’t** , Sid responded regretfully. **Got a project at home**

**Ok I come there and u cook)**

Of course. Sid didn’t mean to smile, but he couldn’t help it. **You can cook at my place. I’ll be home in 30 min**

**(**

Geno’s car was in the driveway when Sid got home, and there were sounds from the kitchen, Geno clattering pots around. That was new—Geno didn’t come over when Sid wasn’t there. Sid was embarrassingly happy that Geno felt comfortable enough to let himself into the house and get cozy with Sid’s cookware.

He went into the kitchen to put his bags down on the table and give Geno a kiss. Geno wrapped one arm around Sid’s shoulders and kissed him a few times. He was holding an onion in his free hand, and the counter was strewn with various ingredients and every one of Sid’s knives, like Geno had gone through and tested all of them, and then rejected most of them as inadequate. Sid said, “What are you making?”

“Pasta,” Geno said, which explained the disarray: Geno liked to make the sauce from scratch. He released Sid and started dicing the onion. “What you buy at store?”

“Stuff to get the naiad to come back,” Sid said. “Not sure it’ll work. I went online.”

“Good,” Geno said. “We eat, then after lunch I help you make lure.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Sid said. Some help would be great, but the naiad was Sid’s problem; he didn’t expect Geno to spend his free time helping to clean up Sid’s messes. “Or, uh, make lunch. I was joking about that.”

Geno squinted at him. “Why that’s joke? I make now, maybe you make next time. We share.”

“Fine,” Sid said. He wasn’t looking for a fight. “Whatever you want.”

“And I know I don’t need to help with naiad. But I want to,” Geno said. He scraped the diced onion into one of the little bowls he had set out. Geno was big on mise en place. “If I have naiad, you don’t help me?”

“Of course I would help you,” Sid said, and realized his error when Geno gave him a pointed look, mouth pursed and eyebrows raised. “Uh, but that’s different.”

“Fine,” Geno said. He turned back to his cutting board and grabbed a tomato. “You go away now, too distract.”

Sid rolled his eyes and left Geno there, muttering over his tomato.

As the kitchen began to emit scents of cooking onion and garlic, Sid sat in the den and used the twine to make a macadamia nut garland. There was a YouTube video with pretty clear instructions, but the nuts were spherical and slippery, his fingers were too big, and he kept fumbling around with the twine and dropping nuts that rolled irretrievably beneath the couch. He got the hang of it eventually, though, and he had a good couple of meters of garland by the time Geno came in, silent on bare feet, and said, “Food is ready.”

Geno was quiet during lunch. Sid didn’t notice until he was mostly finished eating; they both had a bad habit of bolting their food in silence, but Geno usually started talking after his initial hunger was sated, often with his mouth still full. But this time he kept doggedly eating until Sid stretched out his legs and covered Geno’s feet with his.

“Okay?” Sid asked.

Geno smiled at him, only a little bit strained. “Okay. Just think, that’s all.”

“Okay,” Sid said. He took a breath. “Listen, uh. I could use some help this afternoon, if you want to. It’s fine if you don’t. No pressure.”

“Happy to help,” Geno said. He reached over and stole a piece of broccoli from Sid’s plate.

The garland would take a while to finish—probably a few days of working on it while he watched TV. But he got Geno to help him with a lot of the rest of it. They inflated the beach balls, taped loops of twine to them, and hung them from low tree branches near the pool. Sid poured the glitter into the pool, which would definitely make his pool guy yell at him, while Geno brought a platter from the kitchen and arranged the seaweed on it in a starburst pattern to serve as a tempting snack. The last thing was to chalk sigils on the pavers, carefully copying from papers Sid had printed out.

It was slow and tiring work, kneeling on the hard stones and gradually shuffling around the perimeter of the pool. The sun was hot on Sid’s neck and back. He started sweating before long. He kept glancing over at Geno, wanting to tell him that he could go home, it was okay, he didn’t have to keep helping, but something about the stubborn set of Geno’s jaw silenced him every time.

“Okay,” Sid said at last, when he came around again to the first sigil he’d marked. He sat up and arched his spine backward, stretching out his aching muscles. “That’s it, then.”

Geno clambered to his feet with a groan and tossed his chalk back into its bucket. Pink chalk dust liberally coated his palms. His gray T-shirt was soaked with sweat beneath the arms. He smiled at Sid and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Good work.”

“Yeah,” Sid said, his mouth dry. Geno looked great, and Sid loved the way he smelled when he was a little sweaty. He stood up and dusted his hands together, which didn’t do much to clean them. “Thanks, G. This would have taken twice as long without you.”

“Glad you ask me,” Geno said. He gazed at his pink hands and held them up warningly when Sid approached. 

Sid didn’t care about chalk dust. He slid an arm around Geno’s waist and tilted his chin up to kiss Geno’s jaw. “Thanks.”

“You get me dirty,” Geno complained, but he put his own chalky hands on Sid’s shoulders and kissed him until Sid felt like his feet weren’t quite on solid ground.

\+ + +

There was an informal practice at the arena the next afternoon. Sid wanted to go, but he didn’t want to listen to the inevitable chirping about his tentacle. He called Geno to bitch about it, and Geno talked him into going. “Team needs captain, Sid,” he said, like that was obvious and reasonable and clearly outweighed any of Sid’s tentacle-related concerns.

“I’ll think about it,” Sid said.

“You worried I beat you now after summer,” Geno said.

Sid narrowed his eyes. He knew Geno was trying to manipulate him, but it was still effective. “In your goddamn dreams, Malkin.”

He still texted Flower before he left the house. **You warned the guys about the tentacle?**

**Yeah everyone knows about your weird dick**

Fantastic. **Thanks bud. Always know I can count on you**

Whatever Flower had said to them, there was a little bit of staring, and Beau asked him if it hurt, but mostly the guys seemed sympathetic but unconcerned. “Happened to a friend of mine in college,” Bonino told him. “Kind of unpleasant for a couple of weeks, but he got his real one back and said it worked just like always.”

“Uh, thanks,” Sid said. There weren’t many boundaries in the locker room, but he had no desire to discuss the inner workings of his genitalia. “Glad to hear it.”

“You’re welcome,” Bonino said, beaming, and clapped him on the shoulder.

Practice went fine. It always took the team a little while to jell at the beginning of the season, but Sid felt good about the new guys. Kessel seemed great: good sense of humor, happy to be out of Toronto. 

“Glad you come?” Geno asked him afterward, heading into the showers.

“Yeah, you were right, you always know best,” Sid said dryly, and Geno smirked and strutted on ahead of him. Sid didn’t even feel guilty about staring at his ass.

Duper held a barbecue that evening, and Sid went over early to help with the grilling, which turned into sitting on the back deck with Lola on his lap while Carole-Lyne plied him with sangria. “It’s a new recipe,” she told him, “I’m not sure how it turned out,” and for some reason she kept refilling his glass every time it dipped below half-empty, even though he had already told her the sangria was delicious.

“You’re too tense, my friend,” Duper said from where he was certainly burning everything at the grill. “This tentacle has you all worked up. Drink more. Relax.”

“You’ve got no room to talk,” Sid said, “I remember how you were when that utukku kept cursing your shin pads.”

Duper turned to point at him with the spatula. “That was _serious_ , and Cora couldn’t figure out what was going on. Don’t get mouthy with me, Crosby.”

“Your meat’s burning,” Sid said, and Duper swore and poked urgently at the grill.

By the time the rest of the guys started to show up at the house, Sid had put away a significant quantity of sangria and was feeling pretty loose and happy. It was a nice evening, the sun lowering toward the horizon like a yo-yo descending on a string, the long slope of Duper’s yard falling away toward the creek running through the woods. The weather was warm but not hot. Sid watched Duper’s kids running around in the grass and felt wrapped in contentment, insulated from any cares or concerns.

When Tanger arrived, he deposited Alex on Sid’s lap and said, “Happy date night to me.”

“No, come on,” Sid protested, mostly for form’s sake, but Tanger was already gone.

Alex stayed with him for a good long while, to Sid’s delight, eating off the plate of food Carole-Lyne brought and telling stories that Sid couldn’t really understand. Most of the guys came by to say hello, but Sid fought the urge to get up and mingle. He didn’t have to be the captain _all_ the time. He was warm and floating, drunk enough to enjoy it but not so drunk he would regret it in the morning.

“Drunk as a raccoon,” Flower said when he came by with the baby cradled against one shoulder. He shook his head slowly. “Sad.”

“Skunk,” Sid said. “Drunk as a skunk.”

“Is that what it is?” Flower said. “Here, let me trade children with you. Estelle needs a friend, and you look like a man who isn’t going anywhere soon.” 

Scarlett was fast asleep; she barely stirred as Flower transferred her into Sid’s arms. He held her cradled in the crook of his elbow and watched her tiny fists clench where they were curled beside her face. She was so small, and Flower had made her, him and Vero together. 

Flower brought him some more sangria and also a burger. Sid ate with one hand and held Scarlett with the other. Some of the guys were playing horseshoes in the yard, and the steady noise of it was soothing, and their laughter.

“How you get baby?” Geno asked.

Sid looked up. Geno smiled down at him, with that soft look for children and kittens. Sid’s heart drifted up toward the top of his rib cage. Geno was wearing an awful shirt made out of at least three different fabrics. His eyes were so warm and familiar. Sid really wanted to kiss him.

“Guess I got lucky,” Sid said.

Geno’s hand settled at his nape. A shiver ran down Sid’s spine. Nobody knew about them, it wasn’t—but nobody was paying attention. Geno scratched his fingers through the short hairs on Sid’s neck, and then his hand lifted away. “Flower tell me you’re drunk.”

“Maybe,” Sid admitted. “People keep bringing me sangria.”

“You need more?” Geno asked. “I take you home after. Come get your car tomorrow.”

“Think I’ve had enough,” Sid said. Scarlett squirmed and made a small mewling noise without opening her eyes. Sid jiggled her a little, and she settled again. 

“Hmm,” Geno said. “You want brownie? Carole-Lyne say she makes special just for you.”

“Oh, shit, the ones with chocolate chips?” Sid asked, and Geno laughed and squeezed his shoulder and said, “Stay here.”

Geno came back with two brownies on a little plate and a full glass of sangria that he positioned deliberately at Sid’s right hand. He sat there at the table with Sid and ate one of the brownies. Horny was yelling about horseshoes down in the yard. Sid’s arm was starting to fall asleep; he shifted Scarlett to the other side.

“You drunk for real?” Geno asked.

Sid glanced at him. “I can still get it up, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Geno grinned. “Good. Eat brownie, we go home soon.”

Geno extracted them both from the party by loudly going around and talking about how drunk Sid was and berating Flower and Duper for giving him too much sangria. It was ridiculous but effective. Sid rolled his eyes and let him work. They were out of there in twenty minutes.

“My house closer,” Geno said, as Sid buckled his seatbelt.

“Start driving,” Sid said. He could feel the tentacle swelling in his jeans from anticipation.

He started kissing Geno in the garage, and they stumbled up the stairs together into the house, kissing and laughing. “So hot for me, Sid,” Geno said lightly, teasing, and Sid wasn’t teasing at all when he said, “Fuck, I really am.” 

It had been so good last time, in the hotel room, and he was desperate to feel that again, Geno’s big hand around the tentacle, touching him so confidently. Geno groped him through his pants and grinned against his mouth. Sid heard the noises he was making but he didn’t really care. Geno knew he liked it.

Geno hauled him into the den, shoved him down on the couch, and climbed on top. He hadn’t turned on any of the lights, and the sun was going down by then. It was dim in the room, the colorless gray of the last light. Sid felt overheated and desperate, but Geno popped the button on his jeans and dragged the zipper down, and that eased him a little, just to have some of the pressure gone.

“Sid,” Geno muttered, hands in Sid’s hair, kissing him sloppily, grinding his ass against the tentacle. “Fuck, _fuck_ me.”

God. Sid fumbled with Geno’s fly until he managed to get it unzipped. He worked his hands down the back of Geno’s pants to squeeze his ass. Geno groaned and shoved into the touch, his cock hard against Sid’s belly. Sid’s tentacle was throbbing, sticky inside his pants and—moving a little, the way it did. Sid would have been happy to come just like that, with Geno moaning urgently on his lap.

But Geno had other plans. He stopped kissing Sid’s neck and slid to the floor. Sid stared at him dumbly, not totally certain what was happening until Geno started working at the laces of his shoes.

“You can’t,” he said, going rigid with the thought of it.

“Shh, you too drunk,” Geno said. He pulled off Sid’s shoes and tugged at his jeans. “Just relax, feel good. Let me.”

“I’m not that drunk,” Sid said, but he lifted his hips to let Geno pull down his pants and shorts. “Geno—”

“Too drunk,” Geno said stubbornly. He yanked the jeans down over Sid’s feet, and then Sid was half-naked on the couch, his bare ass against the well-worn leather. “You so drunk, you don’t know what’s go on.”

Okay. Geno was being weird as hell. Sid wasn’t in any shape to drive, but he definitely knew what was going on. Geno stared up at him, kneeling on the floor between Sid’s feet, his shoulders pressing Sid’s thighs apart. The light was fading, but Sid could still see Geno’s expression, sort of—nervous, maybe; maybe scared.

“Geno, uh,” Sid said.

“Shh,” Geno said. He licked his lips, and curled one hand around Sid’s tentacle. It was so _wet_.

Sid stared, torn between arousal and mortification, as Geno lowered his head.

He saw Geno’s mouth open and his soft tongue slide out to lick the base of the tentacle, and then he _felt_ it, wet and perfect, dragging over the incredibly tender crease where the tentacle sprouted from his crotch. He shouted and tried to pull back, to straighten up on the sofa and get away from the devastating heat of Geno’s mouth, but Geno’s hands clamped down on Sid’s hips to hold him there, pinned at the edge of the cushion.

“Don’t,” Sid said, humiliated, “it’s too—”

Geno kissed the tentacle. “Please let me,” he said quietly, without looking up. “I know you think it’s bad. Please let me. I want to.”

“Fuck,” Sid breathed. He slid his hands into Geno’s hair. He couldn’t deny Geno anything. “Okay. Okay, you can.”

Geno’s hands flexed on Sid’s hips. He shifted slightly and went back to licking at the base.

Sid couldn’t watch him do it. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back to rest on the couch. The lack of a visual made the sensations even more intense. Geno licked for a while, first at the base and then along the length of the tentacle, each glide of his tongue making Sid’s thighs quiver. He spread his legs wider, needing more, and he heard Geno make a soft sound before he felt Geno’s mouth opening around the tentacle’s tip.

“God!” Sid cried out. He moved his hands to Geno’s shoulders so he wouldn’t accidentally yank on Geno’s hair. Geno went down on him in a smooth glide, taking the tentacle in as far as he could go and then sucking hard as he pulled off, and Sid was grateful for Geno’s hands on his hips to hold him down.

He had a lot of experience with Geno’s blowjobs. They were always great. Geno had a pretty short attention span for giving head, but he was all in for those glorious five minutes before his jaw started hurting.

This blowjob blew every past blowjob out of the water. The tentacle was so sensitive that Sid had expected Geno’s mouth to feel fantastic, but he hadn’t expected Geno to turn the intensity up to 11. Geno seemed so into it, way more than usual, taking Sid in until he choked a little, sucking urgently and without pulling off to take any breaks. Sid opened his eyes sort of accidentally and then couldn’t stop staring. Geno had taken one hand off Sid’s hip and was touching himself through his pants. His eyelids fluttered he bobbed his head, pausing at the top each time to suck on the tip. When Sid brushed his fingers over Geno’s cheeks, they were warm to the touch: flushed.

“Geno,” Sid murmured, and gasped as Geno swallowed him down again and _moaned_. The wet heat of Geno’s mouth was so fucking good. He traced his fingers along Geno’s cheekbones. He was so hard. He was already tensing up to come, and he didn’t want to yet, wanted to stay in that endless molten instant of Geno kneeling up to take Sid’s tentacle down his throat.

He was riding high. He felt so good, and it was Geno there with him, Geno on his knees for him, Geno who featured in most of Sid’s fantasies and had for months, the only person he still thought about, really.

But Geno pulled off then, gasping, and sat back. His chin was wet, from spit or from the tentacle, maybe. He met Sid’s eyes for a split second before he looked away, wiping his mouth. Sid couldn’t see it in the dim light, but he knew what Geno’s aroused flush looked like, high in his cheeks, and his ears stained red. 

“Getting tired?” Sid asked, shocked by the ragged sound of his own voice. “Come back up here, we can—”

“No,” Geno said. He wiped his mouth again and moved his jaw from side to side. His other hand was inside his open fly, and the sight of it sent a flare of heat through Sid’s body. “You come in my mouth.”

“ _God_.” Sid reached down and squeezed the base of the tentacle, feeling it twitch in his grasp. The tip was—wiggling a little. He couldn’t believe Geno was willing to do this. “You really don’t—”

“Shut up,” Geno said, leaning back in. He slid his palms up Sid’s bare thighs, against the grain of the hair, making Sid’s skin prickle. His hands curled around the ridge of Sid’s hips, pressing him down into the couch cushion. “Stay,” Geno said, low and serious, and ducked his head to lick at the underside of the tentacle, the tip of his tongue tracing between the not-quite-sucker nubs.

Sid stayed. There was nowhere for him to go, and nowhere else he wanted to be, not with Geno going down on him again, pressing firmly against the underside with his tongue each time he drew off, and moaning in his throat each time he sank back down. He was touching himself again. Sid clutched at his shoulders, fisted his hands in Geno’s collar. His orgasm was cresting fast, and he let himself go with it, squeezing Geno’s shoulders with his thighs, curling his toes, his eyes sinking shut.

Geno pulled off with a long groan just as Sid was about to come. Sid groaned himself in protest, too close to the edge to form words. But Geno was back in another moment, sloppy and perfect, shoving Sid over hard. Sid cried out and pushed his hips up as much as he could with Geno’s hands on him, and spilled, trembling, in Geno’s mouth.

Geno swallowed, swallowed, pulled back and suckled gently at the tip as Sid finished. He went down again, holding the tentacle in his mouth as it softened, until Sid couldn’t handle the overstimulation and pushed at his shoulders.

There was no light in the room. Sid blinked a few times, like his eyes were the problem instead of the darkness. He could see the shape of Geno kneeling in front of him, but nothing else, certainly not his face, and he was too far away. Sid slid off the couch to join him on the floor.

But Geno didn’t melt into his arms like Sid had hoped, to kiss him and hopefully let Sid take off his pants and return the favor. Instead he braced his hands on Sid’s shoulders to hold him off.

“Geno, what,” Sid said, surprised and hurt. He tried not to jump immediately to the worst conclusion. 

Geno was breathing heavily. “Sid, ah.”

“Hey,” Sid said. He shuffled a little closer, and Geno let him this time. Sid straddled Geno’s thigh and found his face in the dark, cupping his chin to guide Geno in for a kiss. Geno tasted like his come, the same as always. “That was great for me, but we don’t have to do it again if you didn’t like it.”

Geno didn’t reply. There was Sid’s answer. He told himself he wasn’t disappointed. The tentacle would be gone soon, and Geno had never been anything less than enthusiastic about his dick.

“Let me,” he said, shoving one hand down the front of Geno’s pants. Geno flinched away, but it was too late: Sid had his hand inside Geno’s briefs, the sticky, cooling mess of them, and his fingers curling over the soft shape of Geno’s limp cock.

Geno made a low noise. His fingers closed around Sid’s wrist.

Maybe Sid was drunker than he had realized. His brain was clicking like a stuck gear, struggling to craft some explanation. “You came in your pants?”

“Sid,” Geno said, and he sounded miserable.

“Oh my God,” Sid said, realization dawning at last. “You like the tentacle.”

He felt Geno’s posture fold shut like someone taping up a box: shoulders hunching, curling in on himself. That was how he knew for sure that he was right. Geno was ashamed. 

“Don’t,” Geno said, very quiet.

“You—really?” It wasn’t the weirdest thing he had heard of someone liking, but it was still pretty weird. He kissed Geno’s cheek, and his unyielding mouth. “Should we, uh. Talk about it.”

“No,” Geno said. He extracted Sid’s hand from his pants. “You tired? I take you home now.”

Sid had been counting on spending the night. A sick, sour feeling rolled around in his gut. Geno had been in a good mood at Duper’s, and the sex had been great, and now Sid’s tentacle had ruined the evening for both of them. 

“Don’t kick me out,” he said softly. “Come on.” Geno never wanted to talk. If Sid went home now, Geno might decide they were breaking up and never have sex with him again. He kissed Geno a few times, leaning heavily against him, until Geno finally unbent a little and kissed him back, his hands skimming over Sid’s waist.

“Okay,” Geno said. He sighed, and lowered his head to rest it on Sid’s shoulder. “You stay.”

\+ + +

Geno avoided him for a couple of days, which Sid had expected but still wasn’t thrilled about. Geno had done this before, notably after their condoms discussion, and again toward the end of last season when he had melted down in Sid’s hotel room after a bad game. Geno had ten thousand emotions and was only willing to show Sid five of them, and if he accidentally revealed a sixth, he hid at home for a few days, until his embarrassment wore off or maybe he decided Sid had forgotten.

Maybe it wasn’t easy _all_ the time.

Sid finished the macadamia nut garland and strung it from the roof of his pool house. The pool guy had come by and vacuumed out all the glitter; Sid replenished it. The seaweed had gotten soggy from dew and disintegrated. He replaced it. 

He hoped the naiad would come back soon.

He saw Geno at the rink on the third day after Duper’s cookout, when he was there for a workout and to give Cora some of his hair. Geno sidled by him in the change room with a sneaky pat to his ass and a sheepish grin, like he knew he was cute enough that Sid would forgive him immediately. 

Sid hated that he was right. Geno had ignored two invitations to come over and replied to the rest of Sid’s text messages with noncommittal emojis, and if Sid called him out on it he would just extend the duration of his hiding by a couple of days. It was infuriating, but Sid was at fault, too, because he was a coward who didn’t want to rock the boat.

Geno came into the weight room while Sid was doing some lunges and lurked by the bikes for a while, talking with Horny. Sid waited; he knew how this went. Sure enough, Geno drifted over. Sid re-racked the bar in the power cage and sat on one of the safeties and watched him approach.

Both of Geno’s socks had puddled around his ankles. He stopped outside the cage and ran a hand over the back of his head. “Uh, how is naiad?”

“No sign of her,” Sid said, and then decided it was time to rock the fucking boat a little. “You done ignoring me now?”

Geno’s shoulders drew up toward his ears. “I’m just busy,” he muttered.

“Right,” Sid said. Geno’s mixed signals made his chest hurt. Maybe he had been mistaken, thinking that something had changed between them. 

Geno sighed. “I come over later, okay? Eat lunch.”

“Okay,” Sid said, a little mad at himself for thawing so predictably when presented with an olive branch, but not enough to tell Geno to fuck off. “I’m going home after this.”

Geno offered him a tentative smile, sweet and warm, the smile that always made Sid remember why he had fallen into bed with Geno in the first place and why he didn’t want to stop. 

A steady rain had begun by the time Geno arrived for lunch, carrying a six-pack, his hair spangled with water. “I think we drink outside,” he said when he came into the kitchen, grimacing, and gestured to his rain-spattered clothes, “but.”

“Next time,” Sid said. “You want a change of clothes?”

“No, it’s okay,” Geno said. “Not too wet.” He set the beer on the counter and grinned at Sid, cocky, business as usual. 

Sid was going to make him talk about it, somehow, or die trying. He tossed Geno a tomato and watched him catch it neatly, one-handed. “Help me out with the salad, eh?”

They had salad and leftover pasta, and split the six-pack. Geno got progressively quieter, which was a sure sign he was building up to something. Sid left him to it. But Geno still hadn’t spat it out by the time he finished his last beer and got up from the table, and Sid didn’t know what came next, or even really why Geno had come over.

The dishes done, they eyed each other uncertainly. Sid didn’t want Geno to leave, but he wasn’t sure how to ask Geno to stay for what he wanted to do.

“Uh. You busy?” he asked.

“No,” Geno said. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“Well. Come on,” Sid said.

His laptop was in the den; he detoured through to snag it on the way upstairs to his bedroom. Geno trailed after him, clearly puzzled but not arguing. It took some maneuvering, and Geno asking useless questions instead of just going along with it, but eventually Sid got them situated on the bed just how he wanted: him sitting up against the headboard, and Geno between his spread legs, slouched down with his head resting on Sid’s shoulder.

“We’re gonna do some research,” Sid said into Geno’s ear, and he set the laptop on Geno’s thighs and opened the lid.

Geno tensed in his arms. “Sid—”

“Shut up,” Sid said. He had to stretch his arms a little to reach the keyboard. He opened an incognito window and typed _tentacle porn_ in the search bar.

Geno groaned and tried to sit up. Sid wrapped his arms around Geno’s waist and squeezed firmly. “I’ll let you up if you really don’t want to. But I think we need to talk about this.”

“ _Why_ ,” Geno said. He went limp, like he had decided playing dead was the best course of action.

“You know why,” Sid said. Geno was dreaming if he thought he could keep getting off on Sid’s tentacle without even admitting that he liked it. Sid wanted Geno to talk to him about this, to trust him with it, to— _want_ to talk about it.

He ducked his head to kiss Geno’s cheek and scrolled through the search results. There was a Wikipedia page, and an Urban Dictionary entry. He clicked on the Pornhub link, and—okay, wow. There were a lot of videos.

Geno turned his head away. “Geno, come on,” Sid said gently. “I want to know what you like. Let’s watch something.” Some of the videos were cartoons, and some of them were live-action, with fake tentacle props, and even one with a guy who looked like he had been cursed, like Sid. Sid clicked through a couple of pages, trying to decide what Geno might like best. It was hard for him to judge, because he didn’t really understand the appeal in the first place.

Slowly, Geno turned his head toward the computer screen. “That’s good, come on,” Sid murmured to him. He slid his free hand between Geno’s legs to cup his soft dick. “How about this one?” He hovered over a video of a cartoon woman getting gangbanged by a bunch of tentacles.

“No,” Geno said.

Okay. Sid clicked to the next page. Geno rejected videos of a woman fucking herself with a tentacle dildo, and a cartoon guy getting sucked off by an octopus. His dick started to fatten up under Sid’s palm. Sid took that as an encouraging sign and worked his hand into Geno’s shorts to curl around Geno’s dick.

He hovered over another video, a pretty realistic 3D cartoon of a guy handcuffed to a bed getting plowed by a tentacle. Geno didn’t react, and Sid was about to move on to something else when Geno sucked in a ragged breath and said, “That one.”

“Whatever you want, G,” Sid said. He clicked on the video. There was no lead-in: the clip started with the guy already naked and enthusiastically squirming on the tentacle in his ass. The soundtrack featured a lot of wet noises and loud moaning. The tentacle was a dark purple-red; when it pulled out of the guy’s ass for a moment, Sid could see that it had a fat crown like a real dick. Then it plunged back inside, and the cartoon guy shouted and writhed.

Geno writhed, too, shifting in Sid’s arms, the laptop teetering precariously. He was hard and hot in Sid’s grasp. Sid stroked him slowly, teasing down the foreskin with his thumb, a little awkward with his left hand. He wasn’t into the tentacle stuff, but he was into Geno, into everything about Geno, and feeling Geno get turned on was doing it for him in a big way.

“Tell me what you like about it,” he said, turning his head to kiss Geno’s temple. 

“Sid, don’t,” Geno groaned, shifting again, and reached out to grab the laptop before it toppled off his thighs.

“Come on,” Sid said. “Please.” He kissed Geno’s ear, using his teeth a little on the rim, and pinched one of Geno’s nipples through his shirt. He was playing dirty, touching Geno all the ways he liked best, but he didn’t feel any guilt about it. Geno would never tell him otherwise, and Sid was desperate to know. He didn’t want to leave this alone, another item on the list of things about Geno that he would never be permitted to understand. 

“I don’t know!” Geno said, clutching at the laptop with both hands. “I don’t know why I like, I just—see something, maybe some porn, I don’t know.”

“You’ve watched this kind of porn before?” Sid asked. On the screen, a second tentacle appeared and pushed into the guy’s panting mouth.

Geno’s cock twitched in Sid’s hand. “No, I don’t know. I don’t watch.”

Sid kissed Geno’s ear again. His blood pounded through his veins. Geno was talking about it, Geno was _telling him_. “But you think about it. Do you think about this when you jerk off?”

“No,” Geno said. He took a sharp, hitching breath as Sid stroked his dick. “Sometimes.”

“We can do this,” Sid said. He sucked a little on Geno’s earlobe to make him shudder. “I’ll do it with you. Okay? If you want to.”

Geno’s breath caught again on an inhale. “You think tentacle is—gross, bad. So maybe you think _I’m_ gross, if I like.”

“No way,” Sid said. Christ, how could Geno believe he would ever think that? But then he thought, guiltily, that he _had_ been a little weirded out initially, and that maybe Geno had picked up on that. “I mean. I don’t really get it. But if you like it, that’s—I’m not gonna give you a hard time for liking it.” 

Geno’s fingers curled carefully around Sid’s wrist. He didn’t reply.

“Hey,” Sid said. Geno’s cock was getting wet under his hand, and Sid was hard, the tentacle shoved against Geno’s lower back. He would do anything. “Tell me what you want, G. Please. I want to—let me do this for you.”

Geno reached out and closed the laptop and set it aside, cutting off the steady high-pitched moaning. In the sudden stillness of the room, the only sound was Geno’s harsh breathing.

He turned in Sid’s arms, leaning in to kiss him. Sid squirmed down into a more comfortable position and drew Geno into the cradle of his legs. Geno couldn’t hold still, kissing Sid and grinding down against him, groaning, hot for it, and Sid was hot for it, too.

He worked his hands beneath Geno’s T-shirt to feel the muscles flexing along his spine. “What do you want?”

He waited, hanging—hoping that Geno would trust him. Geno panted against Sid’s neck. Here, in broad daylight, the soft gray overcast light of the rain, maybe Geno wouldn’t be able to say it. He’d needed the cover of darkness to suck Sid off.

“Tell me,” Sid said. “Geno.”

Geno stopped moving above him and heaved a sigh, long and dramatic enough to make it clear that he thought Sid was being really fucking annoying. “We just do regular.”

Sid dropped his head back against the pillow in frustration. He could have regular sex with Geno whenever he wanted, but there was a time limit on the tentacle, and a time limit on getting Geno to talk to him about it. Geno liked this, and he had been hiding it from Sid the whole time they had been screwing—because he didn’t trust Sid, or didn’t want to be open with him in that way. 

If Geno wouldn’t tell him, it meant the summer had changed nothing. 

“You can suck me off again,” he said, “or—”

“Stop,” Geno said. He squirmed away and sat up. He was red-faced and scowling. “It’s weird. You think it’s weird. I don’t want to.”

“What?” Sid said, with an abrupt, painful rush of adrenaline. None of this was going how he had wanted.

Geno looked away. He sat there on the bed for a few moments. The agonizing silence dragged on. 

“Geno,” Sid said, hearing his own voice shake.

Geno climbed off the bed. “Maybe I go home now.”

Sid draped one arm over his eyes so Geno wouldn’t see whatever his face was doing. This was why he had never pushed Geno on anything: because Geno wouldn’t push back, he would just disappear, first from the conversation and then from Sid’s life.

“Fine,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”

The rain had stopped by the time Geno left. Sid went out to the pool and surveyed the damp ruins of his lure: the garland sodden and sagging, the chalk sigils all washed away. 

The naiad was surely out of reach for him now, well past the range of whatever sad magic he could muster. 

“Please come back,” he whispered.

\+ + +

He saw Geno at the golf tournament the next day. He wasn’t sure what to expect. Maybe they were done for good, and thinking about that made him feel pretty fucking awful, hollow and dull inside like an empty barrel.

But Geno pulled him aside before the actual golf part got started and said, “Sorry I leave yesterday.” 

“Okay,” Sid said. Was he supposed to be mad? Were they breaking up? He didn’t know how he felt. Geno’s golf outfit looked like something Sid’s grandfather might wear, which made him feel weird about thinking it was hot. Geno hated golf, but he loved dressing the part.

“I come over later,” Geno said. “Okay? I have something for help with naiad.”

“Sure,” Sid said. The tight uncertainty in his chest was easing in the face of Geno’s hopeful smile.

“Maybe I let you win today,” Geno said, which was how Sid knew he was really sorry.

Geno came over that afternoon with a brown paper grocery bag. He unpacked its contents onto the kitchen table as Sid hovered curiously at his shoulder. Geno had brought four citronella candles, a roll of orange crepe paper, a package of sparklers, and a bunch of car fresheners shaped like pine trees, still in their individual plastic wrappers.

“What’s this stuff for?” Sid asked.

“Russian naiad lure,” Geno said. He shuffled the stuff around on the table, avoiding Sid’s eyes. “I look on internet.”

Sid didn’t know what to say. Geno had researched this and gone out to buy the supplies. How long had he been thinking about it? Sid didn’t have a clue what went on in Geno’s head. 

“Let me help,” Geno said, when Sid didn’t respond. “Sid.”

“Okay,” Sid said, trying it out: letting himself lean on Geno a little. “Thanks.”

“You upset about she’s gone,” Geno said.

Sid hadn’t realized it was so obvious. He shrugged and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “She liked me. She was lucky. And I fucked it up.”

“We bring her back,” Geno said. 

“We’ll try, I guess,” Sid said.

They carried everything outside. The crepe paper went around the pillars supporting the roof of his pool house. Geno wrapped it in diagonal stripes, like a barber’s pole, and tied it off carefully at the top. Sid dragged out the ladder and they hung the air fresheners from the trees, mixed in among the beach balls. Sid was grateful, not for the first time, for his privacy bushes, because his yard was starting to look pretty tacky.

Geno set a candle at each corner of the pool and lit them, and then lit two sparklers. “Here,” he said, giving one to Sid. 

“What do I do?” Sid asked.

“Stand there. Hold,” Geno said. 

Easy enough. Sid stayed out of the way as Geno walked counter-clockwise around the pool, holding the sparkler above his head. He chanted something in Russian—a few slow words over and over, Sid realized after a few repetitions. Geno made half a dozen circuits around the pool, and then he reversed directions and made another half-dozen. Then he stopped, crouched down, and extinguished the sparkler in the pool.

“You think it’ll work?” Sid asked him, after he had extinguished his own sparkler, and they had blown out the candles and gathered up the various trash.

Geno shrugged. “Can’t hurt.” He slung an arm around Sid’s shoulder and tilted his face down, the way he did when he wanted Sid to kiss him.

Sid gave him what he wanted, and then took a little bit of what _he_ wanted and squeezed Geno’s ass through his shorts. “You want to stay for dinner?”

Geno smiled down at him. “Yes, okay.”

Sid made tilapia with a big salad and the thinly-sliced roasted potatoes Geno liked, crispy with oil. It was a nice evening, and they ate outside, lingering as dusk turned to night, the sky going orange and pink and then edging toward indigo. The first stars came out. They still hadn’t talked about anything, but Sid felt like Geno’s mere presence at his house for all of these uninterrupted hours, the simple fact of his company, said everything he needed to know.

Almost everything. As they cleaned up in the kitchen, he considered the different things he might say, the different tacks he could take. He didn’t want Geno to leave again before they got this sorted out.

“Sid,” Geno said, and Sid closed the dishwasher and looked up, hoping that Geno would take the reins here and spare Sid the agony of having to initiate this conversation.

But Geno didn’t look like he wanted to talk. He came in fast, doing that looming thing he pulled on the ice sometimes, to trick other guys into thinking he had any idea how to fight. He crowded Sid up against the counter, his hands braced on the granite to either side of Sid’s waist. His eyes were dark and fixed on Sid’s mouth.

Sid didn’t stop him. He wanted Geno all the time, and certainly way more than he wanted to have an uncomfortable discussion about their relationship. He tucked his fingers in the waistband of Geno’s shorts and tilted his head up and deliberately licked his lips. 

“Sid,” Geno breathed, and kissed him.

They needed to talk, but Sid couldn’t help himself. He shoved his hands down the back of Geno’s shorts and opened his mouth to slide his tongue along Geno’s lower lip. Geno wasn’t wearing any underwear, as usual. Sid dipped his fingers into the crease of Geno’s round, tight ass, filling his palms and squeezing.

Geno groaned and pushed against him, shoving Sid back against the counter, the hard edge digging into his lower back. His mouth opened against Sid’s. They kissed, deep and urgent, like it had been weeks instead of twenty-four hours. Sid got one thigh between Geno’s legs and used his grip on Geno’s ass to pull him down, grinding.

Geno pulled back, panting. He licked his bottom lip. “Sid,” he said.

Sid’s pulse throbbed in every vein. “Tell me what you want.”

He still wasn’t sure that Geno would say it. But Geno was here, he had come here, he had hung out all afternoon, and Sid thought—he hoped—

Geno sucked in a ragged breath and said, “Fuck me. With—tentacle.”

Sid’s heart burst into a small explosion of joy and relief. “Of course,” he said. They didn’t do that a lot, but he never turned Geno down when he asked, and of course he would do it now, he would do anything. He tugged at Geno’s hair until Geno lifted his head and let Sid kiss him again. Sid hesitated over his next words, but he remembered the video, and for once he was pretty sure what Geno wanted. “Do you want me to tie you up?”

He knew he was right when Geno shuddered and clutched at him, his fingers biting into Sid’s hips. “Sid—”

“I don’t have handcuffs,” Sid said. There was nothing to handcuff Geno to, anyway; his headboard didn’t have slats. “But I can tie your hands together.”

Geno hid his face against Sid’s neck. “Please,” he whispered.

“Anything,” Sid said, holding Geno in his arms, feeling him tremble, feeling his own chest hot and full. “We’ll do whatever you want.”

They went upstairs. Sid went into his closet to dig an old tie out of a drawer, and when he came back out, Geno had stripped naked and gotten in bed, and the covers were pushed down at his feet. The sight of him lying there waiting, his cock full and flushed against his belly, made Sid stop and stare.

Geno met his gaze. His face was bright red. As Sid watched, he raised his arms above his head and crossed his wrists: the entire perfect length of his body spread out for Sid to enjoy.

Sid had thought he was doing this for Geno, but seeing Geno like that, waiting patiently for Sid to tie him up and fuck him, _asking_ for it— 

He hastily took off his clothes and then straddled Geno’s waist to tie his wrists together with a figure eight knot: strong but easy to untie. He pulled the knot tight and bent to kiss Geno’s mouth. They were both breathing hard. “I can get you out of this in like, two seconds. Just say the word.”

“Okay,” Geno said. He strained upward for another heated kiss. 

“Keep your hands over your head,” Sid told him, and swallowed, and tried it out: “Be good for me.”

Geno moaned and twisted beneath Sid’s weight, and Sid knew right then that this was going to be really good.

He stuffed a pillow under Geno’s hips and opened up the lube. Geno liked getting fucked and probably would have liked to do it more, but Sid thought it was more trouble than it was worth, most of the time. He loved to finger Geno, though, and listen to him enjoy it, and Geno was even noisier than usual. He took the two fingers Sid pushed into his ass and shivered and shifted restlessly, until Sid lay down on top of him to keep him in one place, and so he could suck on Geno’s earlobe and scrape his teeth carefully along Geno’s jawline.

Pinned beneath him, Geno spread his thighs around Sid’s hips and arched his back to rub his cock against Sid’s belly. “Don’t tease,” he pleaded, “fuck me.”

Sid curled his fingers to make Geno moan. “You aren’t in charge here.” Saying it filled him with wild, baffling arousal. He kind of wanted to make Geno come like this, shaking on Sid’s fingers, and then fuck him after, when he was pliant and dazed. Geno would let him. Geno still had his hands above his head, obedient, and Sid was feeling every single one of his own ten thousand emotions. 

Geno shifted again, and his thigh brushed against the tentacle, heavy and aching. Maybe Sid couldn’t actually hold off for that long.

He pulled out his fingers and sat up to take in the sight of Geno trembling against the sheets, legs spread wide, dick leaking. Geno wasn’t particularly submissive in bed, but he was playing at it now, or maybe really feeling it, and either way Sid felt so protective and tender, and shaky with arousal. He wanted to do this just right, to give Geno exactly what he wanted.

He stroked his hands up the insides of Geno’s thighs. “How bad do you want it?”

Geno opened his eyes to give Sid a disbelieving look. “What?”

“Okay, dumb question,” Sid said. He slid his thumb across Geno’s hole, and then again, circling over the rim, where Geno was soft and wet.

Geno swore. His wrists strained as he fought against the tie, and Sid watched him for a moment, ready to stop, but Geno didn’t ask to be released. He arched again, his cock twitching. The leaking head was making a small sticky puddle near his navel. Sid’s mouth watered with the thought of licking it up.

“Fuck me,” Geno said, “please.”

“Okay,” Sid said, and took a breath, and shuffled forward.

Getting inside of Geno took some doing. The tentacle’s thin tip wasn’t the best shape, and the tentacle was less rigid than Sid’s dick, and kept bending aside instead of pushing in. Geno groaned in frustration, his hamstring flexing against Sid’s hand where Sid was holding his leg out of the way, and thumped his hands against the mattress.

“I know, I know,” Sid said, a little desperate, “I’m trying, hold on,” and then finally he got it and lay down on top of Geno again as he sank inside.

Geno’s head tipped back, baring the line of his throat. “Ah!” he cried out, his legs wrapping around Sid’s hips, drawing him in. “Sid—”

“Okay, I know,” Sid muttered. He hadn’t accounted for how sensitive the tentacle was. Geno always felt tight and hot and amazing, but this time it was so good that Sid was a little worried about his stamina. Geno might end up coming on his fingers after all.

He watched Geno’s face carefully as he pushed in. The tentacle was thin only at the tip; the shaft and especially the base were thicker than Sid’s dick, and he knew it was probably an uncomfortable stretch. But Geno just looked fucked up in a good way, eyelids heavy, pupils a little dilated, and his cock was still hard where it was pressed between their bodies.

Sid still wanted to check in. “Okay?” he asked, kissing Geno’s flushed cheek. “Not too much?”

Geno huffed. He turned his head to catch Sid’s mouth in a sweet kiss. “I _like_ too much. It’s good, okay? It’s what I want.”

Sid thought he got it now. The appeal was in being overwhelmed. Geno was tied up: he could pretend that he couldn’t stop it. The tentacle was too big, and he had to lie there and take it. Sid could do whatever he wanted.

He didn’t want anything fancy. He wanted to fuck Geno slowly, so he wouldn’t come too fast, and hold him close to feel the tremors run through Geno’s body. He wanted to blow Geno’s mind. The tentacle took some getting used to—there was a slightly different motion with his hips, like maybe he was using his abs more instead of relying on the familiar hardness of his dick—but once he got it, everything worked.

He and Geno fell into a steady rhythm, Sid fucking in and Geno rocking up to meet him. The tentacle was so slick and Geno moaned each time Sid bottomed out, which made Sid feel like some kind of sex god. Maybe it could be better, though; maybe it could be—perfect, the best Geno had ever had.

“Come on, let’s,” he said, pulling out, ignoring Geno’s displeased grumbling, and sat back on his heels to help Geno turn over onto his side. Geno drew his knees up toward his chest, but that wasn’t quite what Sid wanted, either. He curled his hand around Geno’s top knee and pulled, opening Geno’s hips to bare Geno’s hole, loose and shiny, and his huge fat dick.

Geno twisted to look at him, face half-hidden by the stretch of his own arm. He didn’t say anything. He was breathing fast and shallow, and his dick was so hard Sid knew he was close to the edge.

“I see you,” Sid said, and meant it on every possible level. He was certain that everything he felt for Geno was scribbled all over his face. He knelt there between Geno’s spread legs, and after a few fumbling attempts managed to push back inside.

This angle was better for Geno: he could tell right away, from how Geno’s flush deepened and spread down to his chest. Sid rocked his hips, watching his tentacle sink into Geno’s ass, the way his hole stretched wide. Geno started struggling with the tie again, the muscles in his arms bunching, but he didn’t ask Sid to untie him. “Please,” Geno said, less a word than a sound he thought might get him what he wanted, “please—”

“No,” Sid said experimentally, and was shocked when Geno sobbed and twisted on the bed and came without a hand on him, just from getting fucked—from getting fucked like this, tied up and split open on Sid’s cursed dick.

He held still, buried to the hilt, until Geno was finished. He loved watching Geno’s face as he came. He was hanging on by a bare thread. “Can I—”

“Yes, yes,” Geno said, and Sid snapped his hips forward frantically and let himself come at last.

Geno was limp as putty in the aftermath, letting Sid move him wherever he wanted on the bed. His wrists were a little red when Sid untied him, but Sid didn’t think they would bruise. He hadn’t tied Geno that tightly. 

“Okay?” he asked. He kissed each wrist in turn and watched Geno smile at him.

“Okay,” Geno said. He took Sid’s hands in his, twining their fingers together, pulling Sid down for a kiss.

Maybe the summer hadn’t changed much for Geno, but it had changed everything for Sid.

Usually they handled their own cleanup, but Geno didn’t make any moves to get up, and Sid was still brimming with the satisfaction of how well everything had gone, both the sex and the other stuff, the part where Geno asked for what he wanted. He didn’t mind doing the dirty work. He cleaned Geno off with a couple of tissues and dropped them on the floor to be dealt with in the morning; he didn’t really want to get out of bed, or leave Geno there alone.

And Geno seemed content to be fussed over. He even let Sid turn him over onto his belly to make sure the tentacle hadn’t done any damage, and made a pleased noise when Sid kissed his lower back and squeezed his hips.

“You falling asleep?” Sid asked.

“No,” Geno said. He sounded a little more alert now. He turned onto his back and stretched with his arms above his head, an echo of what they had done together.

Sid lay down beside him and gathered him close. “How was that?” He slid a hand down Geno’s bare side. “Did you like it?”

“Yes, it’s good,” Geno said. “You do just how I want.” He reached down to pull up the duvet from the foot of the bed and drape it over their bodies. He tucked himself in close, his face pushed up against Sid’s throat. They were quiet for several minutes, holding each other, coming down from it.

“I wish you had told me,” he said at last. He stroked Geno’s sweat-damp back. It was really too warm to sleep beneath the duvet. “That you like it.” 

“I tell you,” Geno mumbled.

“I mean before,” Sid said. “Instead of making me guess.” He swallowed. “You won’t ever tell me how you’re feeling. It’s not always easy for me to guess.”

Geno was very still beside him. “We’re not like that.”

No: they weren’t. Sid drew a deep breath and let it out, trying to calm his racing pulse. Fuck it. “We could be.”

Geno didn’t move or reply. Sid waited for a bit, and then he sat up, dislodging Geno from his chest. After all of this, and Geno was still playing possum, and he would never—they were never going to be—

But Geno’s expression, when Sid looked down at him, wasn’t closed off or blank. He was wide open, his eyes and the set of his mouth full of something warm and promising.

Sid’s heart flipped over again, this time from hope instead of despair.

“Sid, I,” Geno said. He inhaled, his chest lifting and sinking again. He reached up to touch Sid’s chin. “When you—the day I get back. When you tell me about curse.”

“Yeah?” Sid said.

Geno flushed and turned his head away. “I’m so scared,” he said. “You could be so sick. And you don’t even tell me right away. You wait two days!”

Geno had an obnoxious habit of conducting half of a conversation inside his head and then getting annoyed when Sid was confused. But this was worse than usual, because it was a conversation from a week ago, which they had concluded, and now Geno was bringing it up again. 

“You were still in Moscow,” Sid said carefully. “You couldn’t do anything.”

“You say I don’t tell how I feel,” Geno said. “But we’re not like that. You don’t tell, either. You talk to Flower, Duper, but not me.”

Okay. That was true. Sid had some adrenaline pumping, even though they weren’t fighting, not really. Geno wasn’t even raising his voice. He took a breath to settle himself. “This was pretty casual, when we started. So I guess when it got less casual, I forgot to act any different.”

Geno softened against the mattress, and Sid only realized then how stiffly he had been holding himself. “It’s, ah.”

“It’s different now, eh?” Sid said. “After this summer.”

“I miss you all summer,” Geno said. He rolled onto his side, facing Sid, and Sid shifted to lie beside him and gather him in, their arms around each other, holding each other. “Wonder what you’re doing. Look at pictures MacKinnon puts on Instagram.”

“You and Nate follow each other?” Sid asked, amused by this revelation. He nosed at Geno’s ear.

Geno muttered something in Russian. “You won’t get, so how else I keep track?”

“What is it you think I’m doing?” Sid asked. “We play a lot of golf. You think I’ve got some other hot Russian I’m screwing?”

“I’m hottest,” Geno said.

Sid ignored him. “I missed you, too. All summer. I was—” He stopped, reconsidered, decided to just fucking say it: pushing, finally, and somehow not too late. “I was counting down the days, toward the end. You know. Fifteen days until Geno.”

Geno pulled back far enough to look at him. He cupped Sid’s face with one hand. His brown eyes were so warm and full of so much fondness and light. “Sid. It’s relationship for me, you know? With you.”

“For me, too,” Sid said. He curled his own hand around Geno’s wrist. “Pretty serious, really.”

“If you get naiad curse,” Geno said, “I want to know. You tell me first, okay? I’m first person.”

Sid wanted to point out that the odds of him getting cursed by a naiad twice in one life were pretty slim, but that wasn’t really the point. It wasn’t about the naiad at all. 

“Top of the list,” he said, “for as long as you want.”

“Maybe a long time,” Geno said. He was a little pink.

Sid’s heart was stretched out like taffy. It felt like love. “Okay by me,” he said.

\+ + +

Geno’s side of the bed was empty when Sid woke up in the morning, but the sheets were still warm, and Geno’s phone was on the nightstand. He hadn’t gone far.

Sid pulled on a pair of shorts and went downstairs. Geno was standing at the sliding doors in the kitchen, wearing nothing but his own shorts and looking out at the yard. Sid went over to him and slid his arms around Geno’s bare waist and kissed his shoulder. “Morning.”

“Sid, look,” Geno said, hushed.

“Hmm?” Sid asked, and then he saw what Geno was looking at: the familiar dark head in his pool, the tangled hair.

“Russian lure,” Geno said. “I tell you.”

“Holy shit,” Sid whispered.

They went out to the pool, hand in hand. Sid was cautious, but the naiad didn’t make any threatening noises, or even swim away from them. She bobbed in the water, holding her baby in her arms: a tiny, bright-eyed creature, clinging to her hair and staring at them as they approached.

Sid stopped at the edge of the pool area, not even all the way to the lounge chairs. “Can we come closer? Can we meet him? Or—her.” He glanced at Geno. “Do you know how to tell?”

“Uh, same with human baby, I think,” Geno said.

That wasn’t helpful. “This is Geno,” he said to the naiad. “He helped me with all this stuff.”

The naiad swam a little closer. She made a soft liquid noise, like a fountain gurgling. “Stuff,” she said.

Sid let go of Geno’s hand and moved forward, one uncertain step and then another. He crouched at the side of the pool. “I’m real sorry about what happened. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

The naiad ducked under the water and swam closer. When she resurfaced, she stared at him for a moment, and then smiled, always kind of an alien expression on her face, and her teeth sharp and gleaming.

“It’s almost winter now,” Sid said, “but I hope you’ll feel like coming back next summer.”

“Summer,” the naiad said. She cuddled her baby close. It made its own small watery sound, reaching up to touch her face. 

The naiad opened her arms, and the baby floated out across the water. As Sid watched, the baby paddled toward him, singing a little song.

“Hi,” Sid said, elated, grinning, trailing his hand through the water, reaching out. “Hi there, baby.”

The naiad whistled warningly. Sid turned to see Geno sidling closer. “It’s okay,” he said to the naiad. “He’s a friend.”

He felt Geno’s hand on his shoulder, and then Geno squatted down beside him. His knee bumped against Sid’s. The baby did a flip in the water and paddled back toward its mother. They were both singing now: the naiad low and complex, the baby high and sweet.

“I think she forgive you,” Geno said.

\+ + +

He went to Geno’s for dinner that night and slept over, and woke early to sunlight streaming through the windows, because Geno had forgotten to close the curtains. Geno was spooned up behind him and clearly awake, judging by the hand on Sid’s ass, squeezing gently. The room smelled like sleep, the faint warm sweaty scent of their bodies sharing space all night.

“Sleepyhead,” Geno said, and kissed the back of Sid’s neck. Sid had called him that _once_ , one time, and now Geno pulled it out basically every time they woke up together.

Sid turned in Geno’s arms and kissed him, close-mouthed, and kissed his cheek once and then again. Geno smiled at him. A shed eyelash clung to the tender skin below his eye. Sid reached up to wipe it away. 

“Time for practice?” Sid asked. 

“Not yet,” Geno said. He kissed Sid and grinned, and then ducked down beneath the covers and started squirming his way down the bed.

Sid closed his eyes and slid his hands into Geno’s hair, settling in to enjoy it. They were both naked after some lazy making out the night before that hadn’t really gone anywhere. Geno kissed Sid’s sternum, bit his nipple to make him yelp, stuck his tongue in Sid’s navel, slid down a little further, and then started laughing, muffled beneath the blankets.

“Something funny, Malkin?” Sid said. He tugged sharply on Geno’s hair. 

“Sid,” Geno said. He sat up. The covers pooled around his waist. Sid was so busy staring at him, the big grin on his face, his hair all fluffed up, that he forgot to ask what Geno was so excited about.

Geno’s expression softened. “Sid,” he said again. He slid one hand down Sid’s torso, and Sid followed the motion, and then struggled up onto his elbows, because that was—Geno had his hand curled around Sid’s dick, his _dick_ , not the tentacle but his actual flesh-and-blood dick.

“Oh my God,” Sid choked out.

“See, I tell you she forgive,” Geno said smugly. He squeezed Sid’s dick and raised his eyebrows. “You sure it’s same one?”

“What the fuck, why wouldn’t it be,” Sid said. He knocked Geno’s hand away to feel for himself: the right size, the right texture, the same dick he’d had all his life.

He looked up at Geno, naked and rumpled, starting to get hard. He was every one of Sid’s dreams. Maybe Sid wasn’t all the way awake yet.

“Maybe we try out, make sure it still works,” Geno said, waggling his eyebrows, which someone must have told him was sexy, judging by how often he did it.

It wasn’t sexy at all, but Sid loved it anyway. He loved every stupid thing Geno did. 

He was going to buy Geno a tentacle dildo. Maybe several. He was certain they existed. He would get Geno something nice: the best that money could buy.

“Good idea,” he said. “Gotta make sure it’s operational.”

“Say what you like,” Geno said, kneeling there between Sid’s legs, eager, smiling, turned on. 

Sid was playing for keeps. The certainty of his good fortune settled in him like an animal bedding down for the night. He had a naiad’s blessing, and Geno’s heart: as much luck as anyone could hope for.

“Suck my dick,” he said, a little breathless. Geno grinned at him and slid back down the bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Sid does indeed buy Geno a tentacle dildo [and it's very pretty (NSFW)](https://www.lovehoney.com/product.cfm?p=21487).
> 
> [I'm on Tumblr](https://sevenfists.tumblr.com/)!


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